Reina: Luis is better than Fernando

19 November 2011 01:54

Pepe Reina will put aside his friendship with Fernando Torres for 90 minutes at Chelsea on Saturday, and believes that Luis Suarez is just as good as the former Liverpool striker.

“Fernando is my friend and I always speak to him,” Reina said. “It will be strange to play against him once again and to see him in blue is kind of strange," said the Liverpool stopper. “But I’ve played many times against friends of mine both in Spain and in England and it’s never been a problem.

“I will wish him all the best of luck after the game but for those 90 minutes I wish him anything else. I don’t want to lose.”

“It was his decision to leave and we had to respect that,” he added. “It was such a large amount of money and it was still a difficult period for the club. Fernando thought it was an opportunity to keep growing as a player.

“What we need to keep is that Fernando scored a fantastic number of goals for Liverpool. He was once the people’s favourite. We’ve said it many times, there is no-one bigger than Liverpool. Players come and go, managers come and go, the club will always stay.

“Luis is just as good if not better than Fernando,” he said. “Those kind of players are really special. You don’t find players like that very often

“The club has done a good job signing Luis and hopefully he will be with us for many years and score as many goals as Fernando.”